Abstract
Regulation of organelles gene expression in optimal timing is crucial for the modulation of cellular metabolisms in eukaryotic plant cells. A unicellular red alga, Cyanidioschyzon, containing only one nucleus, one mitochondrion, and one plastid in the cell and those genome sequences are already determined, is a good model for the analysis of regulatory mechanisms of organelle gene expression during cell cycle. We designed and used the DNA microarray system which covers the whole ORFs in chloroplast and mitochondrion to analyze the regulatory mechanisms of the organelle gene expression. As a result of clustering analysis of the DNA microarray data, we found that putative transcriptional units in these organelles and also could predict the functions of a part of conserved hypothetical chloroplast genes. It also suggests that there are regulatory mechanisms to coordinate the expression pattern of a set of transcripts that are functionally related.
